Iraq exit strategy

A bit of holiday reading until we surface round the New Year: John McDonnell earlier this month on the falling Labour party membership discussed later this month. You can enjoy a few interviews with crushed and disillusioned members and ex-members of the Labour party here .

An interview with John McDonnell at Dagenham about his campaign for the Labour Party leadership so far:

First - the good news, John McDonnell says. The good news from the six months he has spent on the campaign trail through the grassroots is the enthusiasm that people are showing for socialist (let's call them non-Blairite) ideas, and the fact that they're turning out in large numbers to hear them. There was a full house here at the Barking and Dagenham Civic Centre tonight, where McDonnell talked to a GMB branch meeting about the Public Not Private campaign and the million different ways that the private sector is cheerfully ripping off the NHS, local government and any mode of public transport you care to name. 'That enthusiasm is definitely a high,' McDonnell says. 'We have a large coalition of people who are getting organised [at ground and shop level around the campaign].'

The bad news, he says, is the dire state of the Labour Party membership: this might still finish all of them. 'Everybody in the Labour Party is in a state of anxiety about the membership,' McDonnell says. He does look concerned, too, as anybody who a) feels the Labour Party should have a future and b) may shortly be trying to solicit leadership votes from the Party's fast-disappearing members might.